Shortly after 12:30 on the first day of September, Todd Gurley stepped Between the Hedges at Sanford Stadium for the first time, for his first real college football play.

Some 435 miles away in Tarboro, N.C., a town of about 12,000 people situated a couple of hours west of the Outer Banks, Jeff Craddock’s pregame tailgate was spilling over into the first quarter of the Georgia Bulldogs’ season opener against Buffalo.

Craddock rattled off the menu: “Chicken wings—deep-fried chicken wings, homemade fries like you get at the fair and nacho dip.” After all, it was a big occasion. Big enough for Craddock, the head coach at Tarboro High School, his wife Jennifer and their four children—Clay, 10, Kayla, 9, Kara, 7, and Cole, 6—as well as some of his assistant coaches and friends, to gather at Craddock’s house to watch the Bulldogs.

You see, Gurley is sort of a big thing in Tarboro. Now a freshman running back at Georgia, Gurley led Tarboro to the Class 2A North Carolina state title the previous season. Understandably, a good many of the folks in Tarboro are big Gurley fans.

And on Week 1 of the college football season, they were not going to miss seeing him step onto the field for the first time, no matter if it was in mop-up duty or a starring role in the Bulldogs’ game against underdog Buffalo.

It didn’t take long to see it would be the latter.

On Georgia’s opening series, Gurley got his first carry—1 yard. On the next play, he was better, shedding a tackle for a 10-yard touchdown run. The third time Gurley touched the ball? Well, he took the kickoff at the goal line, burst through a crowd at the 20 and darted up the sideline. With one man to beat, Gurley juked and finished off a 100-yard return for another touchdown. Three touches, two touchdowns. Craddock and his crew celebrated (and were able to forget—if only for a few minutes—about the 35 points they allowed the previous night in a win against Northern Nash).

“I think our community is nuts about Georgia now,” says Craddock, whose Vikings are 6-0 and ranked No. 1 in 2A again this year. “I go to church and hear, ‘Coach, I know you watched Todd (Saturday). He’s making us so proud.’ I get that everywhere in town. Right now, Mark Richt has a huge Georgia fan base in the small town of Tarboro, North Carolina.”

A FAST START (OF COURSE)

The numbers are eye-popping: 536 yards on just 68 carries, a 7.9 yards-per-carry average, nine touchdowns and 107.2 yards per game. He leads the SEC in rushing. He averages more yards than future first-round pick Marcus Lattimore at South Carolina, and Florida senior Mike Gillislee, who’s having a career year.

He has done it by running around, past and through opponents. He has hit the 100-yard mark in every game but one, a still-impressive 10-carry, 65-yard night with a touchdown against Missouri.

"I didn't think it would be like this; maybe a touchdown, maybe 30 yards or something like that," Gurley told reporters after his breakout game against Buffalo. "But I didn't know it was going to be like this."

He impressed himself, and others have been equally awed by his achievements.

“I’ve been blown away with what I’m seeing,” legendary Georgia quarterback Buck Belue says. “You don’t see a lot of guys who can run over you and past you. That jumps out immediately. One guy is not bringing him down; he’s outrunning these cornerbacks and defensive backs. That combination, you don’t see much.”

Of course, these are all attributes Craddock saw up close for two seasons at Tarboro. Why only two seasons?

“I didn’t even pull Todd up (to varsity) as a sophomore,” the Vikings coach laughs. “I get joked about it now. We went 15-1 and won the state championship (in 2009), so we had some pretty good running backs then, too. I just left Todd alone—I did pull him up for the playoffs. But I told anybody listening, ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet. This kid is a freak.’”

That’s showing now. Vanderbilt coach James Franklin is a believer. All the 6-foot-1, 218-pound freshman did against his Commodores was run for 130 yards on 16 carries and two touchdowns.

“Just how powerful he is and how big his legs are,” Franklin marveled. “They list him at 220. I’d be surprised if he’s 220. I think he’s 230. He’s a big, strong, physical downhill runner, and again, he’s playing with a lot of confidence right now and playing behind a pretty good offensive line.”

TROUBLED TIMES

When Gurley committed to Richt, he knew what he was stepping into at Georgia. He was going to be, at best, a backup to the player everyone considered the next back to join that elite group of Georgia runners. Isaiah Crowell arrived in Athens with as much hype as any back in years. When Crowell announced he was committing to Georgia on Feb. 2, 2011, he did so by pulling out a bulldog puppy dressed in a red sweater. He backed up his brashness with 850 yards last season as a freshman and was named SEC Freshman of the Year.

On top of the prospect of starting his career behind the sophomore Crowell, Gurley was also part of a two-back recruiting class for the Bulldogs, joining highly touted Keith Marshall, also from North Carolina.

Then, a door opened for Gurley—and closed for Crowell. Crowell was arrested on weapons charges and dismissed from the team in late June, marking the second consecutive season that Georgia’s top returning rusher was sent packing. Washaun Ealey led the Bulldogs in rushing in 2010, but he was granted his unconditional release in May 2011 after several violations of team rules. Another one-time mega-recruit, Caleb King, was declared academically ineligible for what would have been his senior season in 2011.

Through five weeks of the 2012 season, it’s obvious that Gurley is up to the task of producing on the field; it’s what he does off it that will keep Bulldogs coaches and fans on edge. That’s not a knock on Gurley, but more a swipe at those who’ve come before him.

“It’s never just about him,” says Craddock, who talks with Gurley after every game. “He’s taken that down to Georgia. He was never afraid of the competition. We’ve talked behind closed doors and I’ve always told him: ‘Life is all about the choices you make. You have a great opportunity to be great and do great things.’ I would be shocked if Todd would get into any trouble. … Todd is not going to put himself in that position.”

And now, after seeing what happened to Crowell, Gurley has an example staring him straight in the eyes.

“You would hope that we’d all learn from the mistakes other people are making,” Belue says. “That’s certainly out in front of (Gurley and Marshall). It’s hard for them to not see and understand what happened with Isaiah.”

In Gurley, legendary Bulldogs coach Vince Dooley sees the type of person who can avoid the pitfalls that sunk Crowell, Ealey and King.

“I think the fact that he did come (to Georgia) knowing there was a guy there who was a highly touted freshman—he still wanted to come and be a part of it and compete—is a tribute to him,” says Dooley, who won 201 games at Georgia, including its last national title season in 1980 during Herschel Walker’s freshman season.

“I know that he must have thought that he could compete with Crowell, otherwise he wouldn’t have come.

“I’m not sure he would have wanted to come when Herschel was there. In fact, I couldn’t sign a running back for three years when Herschel was there. It didn’t matter how good they were, they knew they were going to sit on the bench. In this case, I don’t think that’s quite the comparison.”

LEGENDARY PERFORMANCE

To hear them talk in Lincolnton, N.C., a city roughly the size of Tarboro, located about 45 minutes west of Charlotte, you’d think Gurley stood 7-feet tall, bench-pressed 600 pounds and ran the 40 in 3 seconds flat. The way he played against the city’s high school in the 2A state title game in Raleigh on Dec. 3, 2011, he might as well have been each of those things.

As legend has it … OK, it’s not legend, it’s the truth, Gurley injured not one, but both of his ankles in the second week of the playoffs. “Actually, on one ankle he had a high and low ankle sprain and on the other ankle it was a low,” Craddock clarifies. “So he had three sprains on two ankles.”

You can see where there is going.

Gurley managed 33 yards in the state semifinals. He scored the game-winning TD, but only because it was close to the goal line and he could only (barely) run straight ahead. He didn’t practice Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday the following week in preparation for the title game. He gave it a shot at Friday’s practice.

“We were practicing against Lincolnton’s screen and Todd picked it off and just took off like a deer running down the sidelines and the whole spirit of the team,” Craddock paused, “It was amazing, the uplift. I said, ‘Todd, you’re done.’ That was all I really needed to see.”

The following afternoon, Gurley dominated the Lincolnton defense. When the day was done, the stat line on Gurley read: 242 rushing yards, four touchdowns and a 39-36 state title victory.

To those who watched, Gurley was part Julius Peppers, part Ethan Horton. He had etched his name among the great high school players to come through North Carolina.

“We saw film on the previous week and he could barely walk,” Lincolnton coach Scott Cloninger says. “I didn’t expect him to be at the speed he was at. For someone to be injured—and he was injured—and perform like he did on that Saturday afternoon … that was just unbelievable.

“I was told both of his ankles were injured. If he’s unhealthy and looks like that, then he’s almost Superman.”

CHASING HISTORY AND HERSCHEL

It didn’t take long for Richt to see that Gurley would be a perfect fit at Georgia.

“He did have good size and speed, agility and balance—all the things you’re looking for in a great back,” Richt said of recruiting Gurley. “We knew that he was a serious student and he was a humble kid. He was a very well-mannered guy—a guy who was attractive to us. The first thing you do, you look at film and say, ‘Can the guy play or not? Can he help us win?’ Obviously, we thought that.”

They thought right. And with just a small sample of his work and less than a year since Crowell conjured up memories of Walker, Rodney Hampton and Garrison Hearst, Gurley is drawing the same comparisons—and then some.

“I expect Gurley to be right underneath Herschel, breaking some of his records, breaking some of my records,” says Robert Edwards, who led the Bulldogs in rushing in 1996 and ’97. “That’s fine with me.”

You don’t just throw around Herschel comparisons. Herschel is Georgia football. No. 34 goes hand in hand with red and black. But even Herschel has described Gurley as "incredible."

“Let me just say, there’s been a lot of great backs—the Georgia fans have been blessed to see a lot of great talent come through there,” says Belue, who handed the ball off to Walker in 1980 and ’81. “As far as the Herschel comparisons go, I think it’s a wonderful thing for a guy like Gurley to shoot for. I don’t expect him to come out and verbalize it, but why not shoot for the stars and be the best you can be?

"From what we’ve seen so far, he’s a special talent. I don’t see anything wrong with trying to accomplish some of the things Herschel accomplished.”

Dooley recruited Walker to Georgia. Heck, he even skipped a family trip to Boston for Easter while waiting on Walker to make his college choice. Dooley said Walker had three things that separated him from everyone else: world-class speed, strength and mental discipline and toughness.

But he’s not ready to put Gurley in that class … or is he?

“For a freshman, he’s certainly off to a great start,” Dooley says. “He may be right in the class of the Knowshon Morenos. I don’t think he’s a Herschel, but he may certainly be a Knowshon Moreno if he continues to play like he’s playing now and has the normal improvement that comes with experience.

“He’s got the chance to be in the mix with some of the great running backs, but it will be hard to duplicate and be a Herschel … but you never know, you never know.”